Health Affairs

GrantWatch Blog invited Sandra Shewry, the California HealthCare Foundation’s director of state health policy, to report on an event held recently in Sacramento, California. Those working in state health agencies and foundations should be interested in this report.    Like a visiting football coach brought in to invigorate the local team, Todd Park, chief technology officer for [...]

Check these out in case you missed them when they first came out on GrantWatch Blog. 1. “Rural Health: Report from the Kentucky Health Policy Forum,” by Susan Zepeda and Amy Watts (September 23). Once again, this post by two staffers at the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, in Louisville, made the most-read list. This [...]

It’s time to let you know of the most-read GrantWatch Blog posts during September—in case you missed them when they first came out. (1) “Philanthropy People Post: Who Is Working Where, Who Has Been Appointed to a Board,” by Health Affairs Senior Editor/GrantWatch, Lee-Lee Prina (September 8). Periodically, I write a blog post focused on people. [...]

GrantWatch Blog asked Kim VanPelt of St. Luke’s Health Initiatives (SLHI) to report on that foundation’s “Keys to Success” forum, held in mid-September in Phoenix, Arizona. The forum’s goal was to discuss the critical issues involved in creating an Arizona health insurance exchange. A public foundation, SLHI primarily works in Maricopa County (the Phoenix metropolitan [...]

Why did the Duke Endowment decide to select disease prevention as one of its three major funding areas in health care? Why would a private foundation invest in programs and infrastructure to prevent disease when the number of uninsured is growing and there is not enough funding available to treat people burdened with chronic disease?  [...]

Read below about some comings and goings at foundations around the country. Abraham Daniels has joined the Sierra Health Foundation. He is in charge of the foundation’s new health initiative that aims to strengthen the main health care safety net in the Sacramento, California, region, according to Sierra’s newsletter. Most recently, Daniels was director of [...]

Medicaid has been in the news over the past few weeks, as President Obama and members of Congress debate whether to make cuts to the federal-state program for the poor and disabled (and to other large entitlement programs) that could help reduce the federal deficit. GrantWatch Blog has gathered just a sampling of what foundations [...]

I have put together a listing here of some foundation-related blog posts that you may want to check out. Now that summer has arrived, perhaps things are slowing down in your workplace, and you now have time for some professional reading! Links to a wide variety of posts follow. Incidentally, if you work for a [...]

Read how community-based organizations can use results of a foundation-funded health survey. On June 2, St. Luke’s Health Initiatives (SLHI) presented information about and findings from the 2010 Arizona Health Survey to an audience of more than 100 community-based organizations in our state. Our aim was to share with these community leaders how that data [...]

Catherine Hess of the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) reports on how foundations are supporting efforts to foster dialogue between states and stakeholders during implementation of health reform. Facts, not ideology, should ground discussions was among the lessons learned at a meeting of state officials and advocates in southern states. Even in political [...]

For those who want to change jobs or find a job, here is a selected sampling of positions that appear to be still open. Please note that I am only mentioning here a few pertinent details. I have put links to URLs for fuller descriptions of the positions, with all of the caveats, limitations, etc.! [...]

California voters rejected a ballot measure to legalize recreational use of marijuana. I was watching CNN’s report on how the measure had fared. Reporter Ted Rowlands was in Oakland, standing next to a woman who presumably supported the initiative; she was holding a pan of baklava, a Greek dessert, that was laced with pot. An [...]

Many aspects of the Affordable Care Act were caught up in the swirl of political rhetoric leading up to this week’s midterm elections. Discussions emanated from the nation’s capital into the Heartland, leaving health and social services providers, as well as citizens, feeling bewildered by the polarizing rhetoric and hungry for facts. Serving in the [...]

In last week’s post, I marked the six-month anniversary of the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I continue here our selected sampling of what philanthropy is doing to help with health reform. Also included today are some related resources on health reform, including a tongue-in-cheek glossary of health care terms (which [...]

More from a meeting of foundations, cosponsored by Grantmakers In Health and others and held at Brandeis University, July 2010 How can philanthropies interested in health care delivery assist states in the complex task of implementing health reform? This was the topic that brought philanthropy types together in late July to share visions and to learn from one [...]

A new GrantWatch paper, “A Philanthropy Tackles Growth in Health Costs at the State Level” was released today as part of the July 2010 issue of Health Affairs. Authors David Sandman, senior vice president of the New York State Health (NYSHealth) Foundation, and Anthony Kovner, a professor of public health and health management at the [...]

Using Political Tactics and Strategies at the State Level to Achieve a Ban on Smoking in Indoor Public Places and Workspaces  As a foundation committed to shaping health policy, we at the Sunflower Foundation made a decision to fund a public policy campaign as a special initiative, rather than a grant program, primarily because there was no nonprofit organization [...]

Many articles in the issue are authored by foundation staffers and/or funded by foundations. The June 2010 issue of Health Affairs was released today. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) provided support toward the issue, which has the theme “Moving Forward on Health Reform.” Inside, you will find the GrantWatch Outcomes column with content on health reform, global [...]

Here are some posts of interest on other health philanthropy blogs. Health Reform: Cali[fornia] Urged to Start Early on New Health Insurance Exchange: This May 12 post reports on remarks of Jon Kingsdale, executive director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority (Massachusetts’s insurance exchange), at a joint hearing of the California Senate and Assembly health [...]

Group of Foundations Award a Total of $615,000 for Implementation The Connecticut state legislature passed SustiNet, the new state health care reform law, in July 2009, when it overrode a veto by Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R). (For background on the law and the role of the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, read the [...]